Around 1900, a group of women in Germany first challenged the social view of the time that the work of an architect was incompatible with femininity. They demanded the right to a university education and by 1909 had succeeded in having all technical universities in Germany admit women to study. Nevertheless, it remained difficult to […]

Around 1900, a group of women in Germany first challenged the social view of the time that the work of an architect was incompatible with femininity. They demanded the right to a university education and by 1909 had succeeded in having all technical universities in Germany admit women to study. Nevertheless, it remained difficult for women to find a job in architecture. Widespread prejudices, such as that women could not handle finances and were unable to supervise workers on a construction site, meant that female architects resorted to strategies to either adapt to or renegotiate social gender expectations. This situation remained dominant throughout the 20th century and to some extent still is today.

It is hardly surprising that the first female architects mainly realized projects in which they themselves or someone from their family was the client. Therese Mogger acquired plots of land in the Gerresheim district of Düsseldorf around 1911, for which she then designed apartment buildings. Elisabeth von Knobelsdorff and Princess Victoria von Bentheim- Steinfurt, both early graduates of the TH Berlin, designed apartments and social facilities that were built on their family’s estates. In the 1920s, it was common for female architects to collaborate with a male partner in order to work on important public projects: A visitor to the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart in 1927 would have encountered Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe, Marlene Moeschke-Poelzig and Hans Poelzig or Else Oppler-Legband and Peter Behrens. As a rule, these women had studied arts and crafts or fine arts. Their design contributions mainly concerned furniture and interior decoration – areas that were considered less prestigious. Women who had studied also had the opportunity to aspire to a position in the civil service. However, they had to remain unmarried in order not to lose their job. In the 1920s, the Austrian Margarete Lihotzky was employed by Ernst May at the Frankfurt Building Department. When she married her professional colleague Wilhelm Schütte, she had to give up her employment and from then on could only work as a freelancer. Her husband was not subject to such restrictions. The period of German National Socialism brought an abrupt end to the careers of a number of promising Jewish women architects. Among them were the Bauhaus students Friedl Dicker and Zsuzsa Bánki as well as Ilse Bloch (née Cats), who had graduated from the TH Berlin. All three women were murdered in Auschwitz. After the Second World War, women in Germany, regardless of whether they worked in the GDR or the FRG, had greater opportunities if they concentrated on construction projects with a social focus, such as housing construction, facilities for children and young people and interior design. After returning from exile in America, Karola Bloch, for example, designed standard typologies for day-care centers for the Deutsche Bauakademie in the 1950s.

Strategies

Based on the biographies of female architects, strategies for success can be identified that go beyond individual personal circumstances and constellations. As a rule, female architects are very mobile and are prepared to emigrate or travel long distances in order to improve their career opportunities. Gertrud Schille not only traveled to Wolfsburg in western Germany for her planetariums, but also to Baghdad and Tripoli in Libya. Furthermore, successful female architects often benefit from the material and intellectual support of colleagues in the same profession and also offer such support themselves. Marie Frommer gave up a flourishing office in Berlin in 1936 and went into exile in New York. Contacts with professional associations of and for women there helped her to re-establish herself. As a result, she was soon able to open an office specializing in the interior design of apartments and stores – a line of business in which women were rare as owners, but nevertheless more readily accepted than elsewhere. Today, although half of all architecture students in Europe are female, women still lag behind men in terms of professional success. Structurally, the strategies of female architects are therefore still similar, they have merely adapted to today’s circumstances in their concrete forms. Even if this is rarely talked about: Women who have additional material resources at their disposal, be it for taking out a loan when setting up an office or for financing childcare, have significantly higher chances of being successful despite social disadvantage and the double burden of work and family.

Office partnerships

Partnerships with men continue to provide female architects with a framework that is conducive to their professional development – especially as the division of responsibilities and traditional gender boundaries are no longer as clearly marked as they were in the past. Well-known examples include Sauerbruch Hutton, Barkow Leibinger, Grüntuch-Ernst, and Bolles + Wilson in Germany; Helen & Hard in Norway; Lacaton & Vassal in France</a>; O’Donnell + Tuomey in Ireland or Bos and van Berkel from UN Studio in the Netherlands. Women are also among the partners in very large offices – for example the Dutch architect Nathalie de Vries from MVRDV or the Belgian Christine Conix from CONIX RDBM. Women also have leading roles in alternative office forms, such as Paloma Strelitz from the London planning collective Assemble. Last but not least, there are architecture firms – including Grafton Architects (Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara) in Dublin, vPPR (Tatiana von Preussen, Catherine Lease, Jessica Reynolds) in London and Schultz Sievers (Cathrin Schultz, Kathrin Sievers) in Bremen – that are run exclusively by women. Even though women now work as architects in very different fields, an above-average number of them still work on projects in which social commitment is the main focus. Susanne Hofmann with her company Baupiloten and Dorte Mandrup in Copenhagen have made a name for themselves with innovative buildings for children and young people. The willingness to be mobile and adapt to different working contexts continues to be a way for women to secure the opportunity to work independently as designers.

This article appeared in our Baumeisterinnen issue in August 2017. Curious about more exciting women in architecture? Click here for the magazine.

TEFAF has once again awarded 50,000 euros to two selected restoration projects in 2017. TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation) will take place in Maastricht from March 10 to 19, 2017. Each year, the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund donates up to 50,000 euros to museums pursuing a current conservation or restoration project. An independent […]

TEFAF has once again awarded 50,000 euros to two selected restoration projects in 2017.

TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation) will take place in Maastricht from March 10 to 19, 2017. Each year, the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund donates up to 50,000 euros to museums pursuing a current conservation or restoration project. An independent committee of international experts decides on the applications submitted. The support is intended both to promote the restoration of special works of art and to communicate the significance and importance of conservation.

This year, the prize money went to the Musée Rodin in Paris and to the Detroit Institute of Arts, USA. The financial injection will enable the restoration and reconstruction of a work by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) entitled “Absolution”. It will also enable the conservation of “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” by Titian (1488-1576), a work that has been on display in the exhibition almost continuously since its purchase.

The 25th anniversary of the TEFAF in 2012 was the occasion to establish the restoration fund for the first time. An overview of the restoration projects supported by TEFAF to date:

2016

Reconstruction of the Tower of Nanjing, de Robien Collection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, France;
Restoration of “Girl in White” by James McNeil Whistler, Singer Memorial Foundation in Laren, Netherlands

2015

Restoration of works by Francisco de Zurbarán, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut

2014

Restoration of three coffin groups and a sarcophagus from the 21st dynasty discovered in 1891, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands;
Restoration of the painting “Miss Nelly O’Brien” by Joshua Reynolds, Wallace Collection in London

2013

Restoration of the portraits of William and Elizabeth James by William Hogarth, Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, USA;
Restoration of two chandeliers combining elements of classical sculpture and carving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

2012

Restoration of a Venice painting by Canaletto, Denver Art Museum, USA;
Conservation of the ten bronze statuettes from the 15th century tomb of Isabella of Bourbon, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam